I’m looking for an experienced web designer who would be interested in designing a subscription-based website with a roleplaying focus. For the moment I’m going to be deliberately vague regarding the details of the project, but to give some indication of the scope:
Content would be accessible through (1) chronological blog-style archiving / daily postings; and (2) an alternative archival format accessed through a heirarchical graphical interface (click on a specific location on one image to open a sub-navigation page with another image that will take you to more specific content).
Preferably this would be the same content, just accessed through different navigations systems.
Automated content drip and subscription feeds probably go without saying, right?
A forum-system integrated into the site’s subscription log-in.
I also need to be able to deliver PDFs as bonus material to subscribers. I would prefer to do this directly through the website, but the twist is that — unlike the rest of the content — subscribers would only gain access to a PDF if it was released while they were an active subscriber.
It may also make sense to include a native store for selling and delivering e-books, but at this time I would consider that an optional feature.
I would like to launch this project some time this fall.
I have a small development budget for this project at this time, but the primary form of compensation would come through a revenue share from the subscription fees.
If you’re interested, please e-mail me with some links to your existing design work and we can start chatting details.
Randolpho
As a web application developer I agree with Kane: you might be asking for more than is feasible. Of course, I don’t know what your budget is, so I might be mistaken.
I suggest the following:
First, look around for a commercial or free/open source product that fits or nearly fits your needs and consider modifying that to fit your vision. With the exception of your “hierarchical archive”, the features you’ve described exist on most forum/portal and e-commerce sites out there. Go free/open source if you can, but consider using some of that budget for a commercial product.
Second, and you may not like this, you may have to reconsider your approach entirely. New subscription based sites rarely do well; the most successful subscription sites are the ones that start out anonymous and add the ability to create a subscription as a following emerges. A closed door is the biggest challenge to getting the traffic you’ll need to service. Even when you’re ready to add subscriptions, reconsider storing usernames and passwords yourself — this is not something you should want to do. Consider using OpenId instead. It’s far more consumer friendly and requires a heck of a lot less security consideration on your part.
I’m not trying to bust your bubble, I’m just trying to help you understand the scope and ramifications.
Third… you didn’t mention hardware in your post; have you considered it? You might be able to get away with a single server hosting both the website and the database, but if you plan to get any sort of traffic you’ll need to scale out soon. Hosting and bandwidth, as I’m sure you already know, can get expensive, fast.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 9:02:04 AM
Kane
I wish you luck in getting that up and running as I really enjoy your site and the content that you have here. Unfortunately I think you’re expectations probably aren’t in line with reality. Individuals and teams that do professional web development simply do not work for nebulous potential money. From what you’ve written of the scale of your project it will likely cost at the very least four (or more) thousand dollars. You might be able to get an amateur and if you’re lucky you’ll even find one who more or less knows what they’re doing, but probably not an experienced designer. Out of the following three things you can only pick two. Good, fast, and cheap.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 4:23:56 AM
Liked by Guest
Guest
What happened to Legends and Labyrinths? Your web-page says “As soon as Justin feels well enough to work, Legends & Labyrinths will be his first priority”. Should you up-date that?
I have twice been tempted to sign up to Monte Cook’s Dungeon-a-Day website. I don’t think I ever will though, because I want to own whatever it is that I’ve spent money on, not just rent it. Also, with a limited amount of money to spend, there so many other great things to have that don’t involve money leaving my bank account automatically every month. But maybe that’s just me.
Good luck with whatever it is that you are doing though.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010, 3:31:41 AM